In a Jam
by Punzie the Platypus
Summary: During Rilla of Ingleside. General Susan leads her regiment of Gertrude Oliver, Rilla, and Jims out at dawn each morning. Their mission? To put up Ingleside's garden's harvest. They're involved in tasks of picking, canning, pickling, being heroines, and listening to Susan reminisce over Rainbow Valley days.


**_Soli Deo gloria_**

 **DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Anne of Green Gables, or Rilla of Ingleside. Or Mason jars. :P Also, this is inspired by the chapter called 'Women's Territory' in 'Then There Were Five' by Elizabeth Enright.  
**

 **Can we all just talk about what bricks Susan, Gertrude, and Rilla were doing WWI? Like, _seriously_.**

"Wars come and wars go but the garden's harvest comes in if the weather acts like it normally does, in peace and out of it, and someone's got to tend to it, be there a Kaiser to fight or not. And, seeing as we're short of menfolk's hands these days, and that garden's about to spoil from all the ripe produce in it, it's to the hoes and baskets we go, girls. Time to buck up and chin up and do what Canada needs us to do." For one not inclined to dramatic, patriotic speeches, Susan could surely burst with one at the drop of a hat.

Rilla hid her sigh as she turned the heel of the grey sock she knitted. She used to have such troubles giving the heel the required turn with the required three needles. She'd almost burst into angry tantrums with threats of tears, but now she did all of it automatically. How could she have been so emotional about such menial, required work? She must do this too, automatically.

Gertrude sighed her sigh, though, sounding for the world a dead-ringer for Cousin Sophia. "When shall we start, Susan?" she said resignedly.

"Well, you're due back at Lowbridge next Sunday, aren't ya? It's only Sunday now. Bright and early tomorrow morning, before the sun comes up too high," Susan said. She rocked and knitted and ran a needle occasionally along an article to keep up with it. It was hard to read, such small print for her old eyes, and so late; Rilla could feel her chin nodding against her chest. She'd startle back to life with a jerk. She'd only put Jims to bed an hour ago! And to think of going to root around in Susan's garden the first thing in the morning!

"We must pick the vegetables ourselves? I thought only of the messy work of pickling and jamming," Gertrude said, in a little horror.

"Did you think they'd just magically appear in bushel baskets, lined up straight in a line? I said we were shorthanded on men, but my hands are still working, and they'll keep working until the Lord decides to give me my last breath." Susan caught Mother's eye. "I'm sorry for that picture, Mrs. Dr. dear. I mean it, and I mean to teach young Miss Oliver and Rilla some skills in the kitchen, very applicable inside of wartimes and out."

Gertrude and Rilla exchanged a tired sigh between them. Being a heroine didn't seem such the idealistic vision as it had when they first started. But they, with heart, kept on just the same.

The next morning emerged from the sunrise with a breathe of cheerful resignation and brightness. Birds twittered in the tall spruces, and if Rilla listened attentively, she could discern from far off the distinctive old habit of the twinkling bells tangled around the two old Tree Lovers. She could hardly stand the romance the pink morning offered; she wore heavy boots that used to belong to Jem, and her beautiful brown hair, once so envied by others and cherished by her, was tied up distastefully under a full hat not unlike those worn by hired hands. "It'll keep the sun from gettin' in your pretty eyes; I only hope your complexion won't be ruined by it. But if it is, it can't be helped, unfortunately," Susan said unsympathetically as Rilla stomped into the kitchen.

"With my luck, I'll get freckles," Rilla said unhelpfully, showing off her youth.

"Your mother _was_ susceptible to freckles," Susan commented observantly—and also unhelpfully.

Susan herself wore heavy boots and a stiff, clean but still badly stained bonnet. Rilla resented her homely look. She stiffly helped set the table and automatically made up Jims's breakfast. She watched him jovially make a royal mess of his oatmeal bitterly, then took him up and stuffed a hat down on him. "I have half a mind to tie him up to the tree, with a long leash, like a puppy. I'm afraid he'll get into such scrapes. What if he wanders down into Rainbow Valley and into that brook? Oh, if he could be a baby and sleep again, and never wander around so I don't know where he's gone!"

"I don't recall him sleeping too much as an infant," Gertrude commented wryly.

Rilla ignored her as they two, Jims's trusting little paw tucked neatly into Rilla's now work-worn hand, followed General Susan to the work shed. It was located in a small corner of the beautiful gardens that crept and grew all over the delightful tangles of Ingleside's backyard. Once well-visited and traversed, through the backyard to the back door or skipped across to the intoxicating call of Rainbow Valley. Now it stood as everything else in the Glen: duty-bound to Canada and the war effort, because of the Kaiser.

Susan, like a true general, called out orders as she silently handed out weapons to her small but worthy regiment. "We've got some work on our hands to get these vegetables put up, but it's a worthy duty and we'll stick to it and have a fine reward for our efforts in the end." Thick gloves encompassed hands accustomed to teaching and knitting and writing anxious, yet cheering letters. "The tomatoes will need putting up; cucumbers. There's some beets that'll make a good pickle, and not consume too much of our sugar. I only hope I fetched enough vinegar last night for the job. We've got the week to do it, and dawn everyday, like regular soldiers. Thank the Lord we haven't got to live in this mud like our boys do. Jem makes it sound as good as he can in his letters but I can spot a weed in a rose's clothing, despite his efforts." A hoe to Gretchen, a small shovel to Rilla, and a tiny rake, three-pronged like a fork, was given to Jims. He wasn't expected to be of much help, being a tot, but he needed something to keep his small hands busy. He squealed with delight and a smile revealed cunning teeth, which Rilla took much pride in, despite her remaining irksome mood.

"Them squashes over yonder will make some wonderful preserves. Miss Oliver, get as many as is big enough hoed and piled at the back of the house. Don't put them in the house. We're going to have so many bushels full of tomatoes and such that there'll be not enough room, hopefully."

Rilla wasn't thrilled by that last word tacked untactfully at the end of Susan's orders.

"After we get this in, we'll take a week off to neglected duties. Then it'll be you and me fetching in the rest of the uncannables." (This to Rilla.) "We're going to have such a full pantry for the winter! I feel just like an old settler!" Susan set forth to her duty with the same determination and bravery of a soldier. She found some solace in menacingly picking off Japanese beetles eting up her plants and stomping them under her boot. "You won't destroy us!" she shouted.

Rilla fell to work with a sigh. This week's agenda covered the tomatoes, cucumbers, some squashes including some pumpkins, green beans, beets, and cabbages (oh, how she hated sauerkraut! "It isn't patriotic, it being German, Susan," she'd pointed out eagerly. Susan had mulled this over, but said, "It is, but we been eting it for a long time before we knew that, and it's a means of preservation, not of preference!") And then, to pick the rest of the gardens! Carrots and potatoes and onions! This is not what eighteen was supposed to look like. But there it was, and she must endure. It was an honor to perform this duty.

Even so, she could only check the sighs so much as she ran after Jims. He'd dashed away from her and skipped along the even rows, like of soldiers. She caught him by the waist and he shrieked with laughter. The shriek provoked several crows to cast themselves away from their gathering in the oak tree, all bristling and displeased by someone being louder than them.

"Come, Jims, let's win the war," Rilla said pleadingly.

Each fell to her duty with a different method of passing the time. Rilla spent her time filling her bushel full of the glistening jewels of tomatoes in varying sizes and densities. She knelt in the dirt and put a hand on Jims often to turn him back to his duty of helping her gather them. He was really more interested in Mr. Hyde prowling around like a hunter stalking his prey.

Gertrude alternated between humming heartening war songs under her breath or holding her tongue as she lugged the dense acorn squashes and shining pumpkins to the side of the house. This last was an especial love of Susan's heart. Besides Shirley and Canada's sons, her pumpkins were the next best thing she was proud of.

Both these girls and the tot had ears for Susan's nonstop chatter. Susan always found talk to keep time passing by when you've got to grit your teeth and get through your chores like the duty-bound patriotic citizen you were. Neither Gertrude or Rilla trusted their voices not to betray their immense dislike for the hot dirty work they'd been commanded to perform, so Susan pulled triple-duty and carried on rightly. She had a great deal of stories up her strict grey sleeves, and found no problem in airing them as she picked the cukes and popped the beets out of their hiding places.

"This takes me back, many a year—1904, was it? I don't even remember. I _do_ remember that Mrs. and Doctor dear were out of the Glen on a vacation. They was off to Kingsport for a class reunion. I remember the people your mother looked forward to seeing as if she'd just told me not five minutes ago. 'Stella, dear old Stella, Susan, and Phil Blake, and we're to see Aunt Jamesina, after so long! Aunt Jamesina!' I don't remember who she said Aunt Jamesina was, anyway. I was left with Miss Rebecca Dew and the six children. I thank the Lord to this day that it was the respectable Miss Dew I was left to fight with and not Miss Mary Maria Blythe. If she'd stayed that long—!"

Rilla sat back on her heels suddenly, much horrified. "I remember aunt Mary Maria. Oh, how we hated her!"

"Really? Really, truly _hated_ her?" Gertrude teased.

"She _was_ a spiteful, _awful_ character," Susan admitted. Gertrude, though thirty, was often admonished as if she was still a young girl by Susan. Her mouth opened agape in surprise at this. Susan Baker, _defending_ a declaration of hatred for a human creature that wasn't some horrible anti-Ally politician!? But this was too much!

Susan noticed Gertrude's surprise and took a guilty glimpse at the house, as if the Dr. and Mrs. could hear her. She knew that Anne had gone off to Miss Cornelia's to borrow a new knitting needle and then off to the Ladies' Aid, and didn't she see the doctor sleeping drowsily a well-earned sleep in his own bed, him earned it after delivering one babe into the world and another away from the stinging clasp of death that past night? Still, she didn't want to even entertain the idea of them hearing her. She only said, "Well, it doesn't do to speak ill of the dead." She fell to the harvesting of cukes with a feverish fervor.

"Where was I?"

"It was you and Miss Rebecca Dew against the Blythe hordes," Gertrude said calmly.

"We weren't _that_ bad!" Rilla said defensively. She could barely think back to those years, being only five-years-old at the time. Still—!

"All in all, not that bad," Susan admitted. "Well, it was a bad time. It was harvest time, and in an attempt to not further expenses while your parents were gone, Miss Dew and I, fancying ourselves up to the challenge, decided to do your poor mother a favor and get in the harvest and canning ourselves. You'll not remember, probably, but we didn't have such a garden in those days. Your mother cared more about the flowers than the food producing plants, but that doesn't matter now, anyway.

"It was during the school years, the one before Jem went on to Queen's. The Manse kids played in the Methodist graveyard in those days. Ah, bad days, always full of gossip about those poor kids! Anyway, Mary Vance would often pop up with something from Mrs. Marshall Elliot, sometimes a pound of sugar or some Mason jar rings. But _always_ she stepped into the kitchen to see if she could coax some of our kids down for some fun, but always found them helping me and Miss Dew. Usually she offered Miss Dew two cents' worth of advice, all sassy and impertinent! Oh, I could've swatted her sometimes!

"Jem and Walter were in charge of picking and bringing in the vegetables. Jem was all right about it, except when he'd stop and play with one of the dogs. But I'm glad that he did! Walter, though, I'd catch him as often at work as not. I'd find him set against a stump writing on a poem about the redness and ruddiness of an apple! An apple! But, I'm glad he did that, now."

Rilla was glad that Walter did, too.

"Rilla, we lost you at one point. You'd been tasked with taking a small basket of tomatoes into the house—'Step to it, and don't stumble; goodness knows you'll stumble and make such a mess we'll all have to stop our own work and clean it up,' Mary Vance said, which must've vexed you something awful—anyway, you didn't go into the house, but wandered down to Rainbow Valley, just as you fear young Jims will get into his head to do. Anyways, I go to the door looking for you, and Mary Vance, Miss Impertinence, put her hands on her hips and said straight to me, 'You've lost her, Susan Baker? And her five-years-old, too old to get lost!' I swallowed my scolding her until after we found you, which was easy enough. Though, you'd stepped into the little back corner where that little apple tree one of the boys had discovered was. None of us expected you back there and it took a trifle longer to find you than we suspected."

Rilla burned a little under this little remembrance. She remembered a little now—after the whole dried fish episode, she didn't take a single command of Mary's. She'd probably deliberately disobeyed Mary Vance on purpose.

Now Susan sucked in a breath and took a moment to get her stiff old joints in order to stand up straight. "There we go! I've got six quarts' worth of cukes. Just let me sit them inside and I'll be back."

Rilla sneaked over to Gertrude, leaving Jims wholly occupied in the entrancing odd gaunt of a harmless garden beetle—not of the Japanese variety. "I've got such dirt under my nails," Rilla said pathetically.

"It's better than having dirt in every crevice of your body, like those poor boys in khaki." Gertrude didn't need to say, "Like your brother." Rilla instantly turned red, her complexion momentarily ruined, and repented of her sour vanity by wishing for gobs of freckles all over her fine sharp white features.

Susan came back, after spending a moment leaning against the back doorway, breathing heavy. "I can feel the oldness in my bones. I ain't as young as I think I am," Susan said. Not complainingly, but factually.

Rilla flew to her. "Susan! Don't speak like that! You won't be taken, too!"

Susan looked alarmed. "Rilla, calm down. I'm just acknowledging my old earthly body. I'm not dying! Pick tomatoes!"

As if 'pick tomatoes!' could be a calming command. Still, Rilla pulled Jims away from his amusement and set back to work with a vigor. They _were_ especially nice tomatoes, with tight skins almost bursting over their portly waists, with such fun little drapes of stringy green hair.

"Where was I? Ah, yes. Well, the twins kept themselves busy by collecting the best and brightest of the vegetables, but they didn't put them in their baskets. They set them up in neat little collections in the dirt pathways and argued over who had the prettier collection. They would pick up one of the other's tomatoes and pop them into their mouths! Miss Dew had to grab Nan, all pink, and I had to catch up Di, all white-faced, from each other; they had tomato seeds all over their faces. I scolded them, saying only babies had food all over their faces like that. Now, I stayed outside with the crew during the afternoons after school, and Miss Dew kept command of the kitchen. The only one of you who caused no trouble was Shirley." Susan stopped short of plucking out the beets to sit back on her boots. She didn't cry or sigh; she only stared at the ground. She didn't see the ground, but her proud little brown boy all grown up into a smart, cool, dependable young man. Now up in an aeroplane!

"Shirley was such a good boy. He never left my side. He dug up potatoes and put them in my basket. He carried around the water bucket. He carried baskets and got dirty but never too much, just enough as you always get when you work in a garden. He was such a good boy. I always made sure he got plenty of cookies with extra jam when we were done." Susan said this as a comfort to herself, and in pride. She didn't know it when she did it, but she was glad now that she'd lavished desired treats with a generous hand on her dear delightful boy.

"It was hot work in the kitchen. Miss Dew and I did most of the canning when you children were at school. As soon as you came home, though, outside to picking we went! And what preserves! We got fruit in, blueberries and plums and peaches and apples! My favorite, though, was the plum preserves. Mrs. Dr. Dear says that they surpass even Miss Cuthbert's of old. 'Davy would eat every drop if he was here,' she said. Now, I don't account any of my cookings like Miss Cuthbert's, as she was always a sight above me, but that was a worthy nice compliment, anyway."

Rilla stood up with her bushel almost full. She strained her shoulder supporting its weight. She caught the sight of Susan's work-worn, gaunt, kind old face. She was smiling, looking over the garden, and beyond, over to the Rainbow Valley. Susan never gave herself away to the flight of fancy (well, never was a strong word, but she didn't do it _often_ ), but to Rilla, she thought Susan looked as if she was watching the ghosts of Blythe children past running down to Rainbow Valley, their echoing voices fading away into past years.

Rilla lugged the bushel into the kitchen and set it down with a grunt. Jims stood in the doorway, offering his paw to her. She wearily took it, and gave it a squeeze. She didn't know how much longer Jims would be hers, and she knew he wouldn't be so small for so long. Susan taught her to appreciate this moment.

Susan called an end to picking by an hour before noon. "It's about to get raging hot, with the sun hitting the top of the sky. So let's get in, get a drink and get lunch on."

"I'm so hungry, I could eat a horse," Rilla admitted to Gertrude in the kitchen. She sat back on a chair and held a piece of ice in a rag at the back of her neck. Beside her Jims guzzled ginger water.

Gertrude hid her smile at her inelegant statement and said, "I could too, Rilla."

What _had_ been nice about being out in the dark, earthy garden under the protection of the magic of the winds, chirping birds, and drying drops of dew on the grass, was not remembering the war. Now it came back to them in the kitchen, with the newspaper hurriedly studied by the two girls and the mail anticipated and the piles of knitting set about on any smooth surface and the telephone ringing every ten minutes.

"Let's get to moving, girls. You've absorbed all that newspaper's got and more. It has more wrinkles than smoothness now, I warrant." Susan's brusque return to business was her philosophy: keeping one's hands busy kept one from delving into the soul-absorbing depths of self-pity and sulking.

Rilla and Gertrude reluctantly tore themselves away from the depressing business of a day's news that did nothing to further the war but just spread it out longer one more day. Susan tasked them with prepping the tomatoes while she whisked up biscuits and gave a stir to the stew she'd gotten braising before they'd stepped a foot outside. "Still got that old soup tureen, Rilla? Could use it to serve this in."

Rilla didn't know if Susan was making a sly dig or an unconscious remark. Whatever it was, she shrugged off its itch on her skin and engrossed herself in the horribly slippery job of scoring tomatoes for their dip into boiling water. Gertrude donned a clean gardening glove and dropped them mercilessly into the pot. She retrieved them almost as soon as she drowned them and stuck them in some tepid water from the well. The smell of tomatoes was fresh in the kitchen, but became a stench to Rilla's pretty nose as the day stretched on and on. They kept to this tomato business, and it became harder and harder to keep up for king and country and brother.

The garden seemed a never-ending cornucopia, always full to bursting of bounty every morning at dawn when Rilla, Gertrude, and Jims, yawning, entered upon its ground. Susan always seemed more awake than them. She removed herself from the gardens after an hour or two, to get some headway into the canning processes. Rilla and Gertrude left her gratefully to these tasks. They found the gardens a relief from the kitchen, which burned with the heat of five fiery furnaces. In the kitchen your hair became wet and drab and your dress became damp with sweat. Pots of boiling water and rattling jars and sterilization threw out any romance of the job that could be imagined of it. The floor, covered in cucumber ends and tomato juice; the pretty Mason jars would tremble sometimes; one had broken under too pressure under Rilla's eye. It never would've exploded under Susan's supervision. It wouldn't have dared to.

Anne joined them a couple of mornings. Her pale face rejoiced under the beautiful sun. "August is a beautiful month. Not as rich as April or magnificent as October, but _friendly_ and _there_ in its own way," she said. Her eyes too saw those ghosts of children. She gave Rilla motivation to be cheerful and chatty. Otherwise, Mother would look away into the ground, and would see a little white cross in the ground of France instead of her own dear Ingleside.

Dad once used one of the pots of boiling water to sterilize his medical instruments. Everyone at Ingleside laughed at the mistake except Susan. She wasn't pleased.

By the time Rilla and Gertrude wearily threw themselves in bed at Jims's bedtime Saturday evening, they'd accomplished all Susan had them set out to do. When they woke up later than they had all week that morning, they went downstairs to survey their work. Set up in the pantry, the sunlight streaming in and hitting them, making them shine like a church's stained glass window, were the fruits of their labor. From the canned vegetables—the spoonable tomatoes, the sour pickles, the glowing, floating beets, the smooth squash and pumpkin, the stringy sauerkraut ( _It_ does _look sort of nice_ , Rilla let herself think—not say, but think), the straight lines of polite green beans—to the smooth jams, jellies, and preserves made of the plums, blueberries, peaches, and apples.

"They're perfectly lovely," Gertrude said, letting herself give in to romance for a moment.

Rilla picked up a jar of tomatoes and smiled. "They _are_ sort of nice." They were products of love and hard work, and they would do a good job in feeding them that winter. It was all resourceful, and smart, and something to write the boys about. After the fact, Rilla was pleased. Really, all she'd hoped was that Irene Howard wouldn't be walking on the road past her house and see her on her knees every day of the week. Seeing as that hadn't happened, Rilla's joy was complete and untainted.

Susan, in the corner knitting while breakfast cooked, couldn't help beaming with pride, too. Her pride was complete and untainted as well—well, it was, until Mrs. Dr. Dear came into the kitchen and Susan pointed her to a certain collection of jars. "Pumpkin preserves! Your favorite, Mrs. Dr. dear!" She frowned when Mrs. Dr. dear took one look at the preserves and broke into real peals of laughter. Rilla and Gertrude rejoiced in this change in Mother, while Susan said, "I don't see what's so funny."

"No, I don't think anyone else would find it funny except Gilbert. Thank you for making them, Susan, but don't let anyone else in the Glen know that I like them!"

Susan scowled as Mrs. Dr. dear continued her laughter. What was there in pumpkin preserves to laugh at? They were fine results of plenty of hard work! And they tasted good, too! Well, Mrs. Dr. dear _was_ weird by spells. . . Susan consoled herself with that thought.

 **Thanks for reading! Review?**


End file.
